Jose Ernesto Medellin is scheduled to be executed by the state of Texas next Tuesday, a date that is, in the estimation of many, not a moment too soon. According to his own confession, and the testimony of others, Medellin and several others brutally gang-raped, beat, then strangled (first with a belt, then with the girls' own shoelaces) 14-year-old Jennifer Ertman and 16-year-old Elizabeth Peña as the two were walking home on the evening of June 24, 1993. Medellin, et al., further brutalized the girls' bodies after their death "to make sure they were really dead," later bragging to friends.